Her Orc Blacksmith

The Blacksmith's Guild told her no. The orc in the back of the room didn't. Soraya Ashford has spent three years stitching gowns for women who don't bother to learn her name, swallowing every slight for coin that barely feeds her boy. She's a widow. She's exhausted. And tonight, on her son's seventh birthday, she's done being small. So she walks into the Guild and asks for what's hers. They laugh her out of the hall. Then a shadow at the back of the room steps forward-seven feet of scarred green muscle, war-marks down both arms-and says he'll train her himself. Vorgath's forge sits deep in the Moonshadow Forest, far from human eyes. The work is brutal. His standards are merciless. And the way he watches her swing a hammer is anything but mentorly. One apprenticeship. One scandal waiting to break. One orc who's already decided she's his to teach. His to protect. His to mark. But Vorgath has enemies older than her grief. And one of them just struck the first match.

The Blacksmith's Guild told her no. The orc in the back of the room didn't. Soraya Ashford has spent three years stitching gowns for women who don't bother to learn her name, swallowing every slight for coin that barely feeds her boy. She's a widow. She's exhausted. And tonight, on her son's seventh birthday, she's done being small. So she walks into the Guild and asks for what's hers. They laugh her out of the hall. Then a shadow at the back of the room steps forward-seven feet of scarred green muscle, war-marks down both arms-and says he'll train her himself. Vorgath's forge sits deep in the Moonshadow Forest, far from human eyes. The work is brutal. His standards are merciless. And the way he watches her swing a hammer is anything but mentorly. One apprenticeship. One scandal waiting to break. One orc who's already decided she's his to teach. His to protect. His to mark. But Vorgath has enemies older than her grief. And one of them just struck the first match.